Three practices have successfully moved from separate surgeries into one purpose-built health centre.

December 2004: EMIS PCS Enterprise powers revolutionary 'super-surgery'

A groundbreaking 'super-surgery' in Newham, East London is using EMIS PCS Enterprise to facilitate its unique way of providing patient care. The centre is the result of a partnership between Newham PCT and East London Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) Project.

Three practices have successfully moved from separate surgeries into one purpose-built health centre, as part of Newham PCT's LIFT project. This small-scale project is the initial stage of a wider LIFT development, which will see at least three similar sized projects implemented for Newham PCT during the next few years.

One-stop-shop

Bringing together single-handed GPs into a single health centre building allows each GP to economically share a host of common resources, such as nursing facilities and reception staff. The new health centre will provide patients with a one-stop-shop of GPs, dentists and other healthcare professionals.

Supporting around 15,000 patients, the PCS Enterprise system is currently being accessed by up to 40 concurrent users from the newly built health centre in Newham, East London. Installation was successfully completed within the original time constraints, with the system fully operational in August 2004.

Using PCS Enterprise has enabled each practice to have an individual patient database, while allowing reception staff and community teams to access patient data and appointments across each practice. The central database server is hosted off-site for added security of data.

PCT view

John Smith, LIFT ICT Project Manager for Newham Primary Care Trust said: "From the outset, this project involved a very strict timeframe. The one-stop primary care centre was being purpose-built, and it was essential that the PCS Enterprise system was up and running by August 2004.

"Our practices have been extremely positive about the project. There was little disruption with the migration of existing data, EMIS PCS is already proving to be very popular with our GPs.

"The PCS Enterprise system from EMIS has enabled the health centre to combine each GP's individual patient information on one complete system, without the maintenance and cost of separate servers.

"It is great to see the first stage complete, and be able to see the real benefits of the LIFT scheme in operation. We are happy to say that the project has been a huge success, and are looking forward to the next building project."

EMIS view

Sean Riddell, Deputy Managing Director of EMIS said: "We're delighted to be involved in such a groundbreaking project.

"The one-stop-shop approach to primary care provision has many obvious advantages. Housing a variety of expertise under one roof allows NHS resources to go further and gives patients a highly-convenient service. A flexible IT system is a crucial element of this kind of joint delivery approach."